Some Good News and a Lil’ Diddy

What. Is. Up. Everybody? Happy Thursday!

I know I’ve mentioned at least half a dozen times how hard flooring is lately, but that’s all done now! Spent the better part of a couple weeks on my hands and knees (sh’narf, giggle, chuckle) doing that and other house projects, but today marks the first foot coming down on the finish line. -cue applause-

But that’s not the good news. I’ve also mentioned the NYC Midnight fiction contests I take part in every so often (actually, every year since finding out about them…totaling…two, actually) and the entries I put in towards them. In the standard manner of submitting to fiction markets, I just sort of floated my entry out there without any expectation of success.

WELL THAT CHANGES TODAY!

Got an email this very morning showing I ranked #6 in the top fifteen of Round One. I know it’s not a walk-off Home Run or taking the championship trophy or anything, but it’s pretty cool to me, so, endure my raving- YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!

Ahem.

So my back is sore, my knees and hips are sore, the muscles in my feet, weirdly, are sore, but my heart is full. Anyway, that was the good news, on to the diddy aforementioned as “lil”.

Sort of like the prompt challenges we cranked out for a while, I want to do a brief free-write. It’ll be the same concept as racing the clock to get the story done, but less stressful. We’re gonna be cool, breezy, groovy, laid back, and most chill, brah. At a library event (SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL LIBRARIES) a little while ago, I got a fun little flip-book that supplies writing prompts in three components: a setting, a character, and a basic “quest” (for lack of a better word, and I feel “quest” underappreciated and underutilized).

So we’ll flip through, see what comes up, and get goin’ with a time “limit” of, oh, fifteen short-ass minutes. Excuse me while I flippy flippy.

-flippy flips-

Oh…oh Lord…

Okay, listen. I will never lie to you guys. Even if you have no way of verifying that, it wouldn’t feel right, so I’ll always be honest with you.

I think I fucked up.

I flipped the pages. I proceeded to then flop the pages. After which, I fanned more pages. And this is what we got:

With only a week to live,
a licensed cat-hair stylist
creates a family of robots.

Hmm…, right. Sort of makes a quick right turn there at number three, dun’nit? Well, what the heck, let’s dive on in…

Nine Lives

Stacy lied on her back, watching the ceiling fan slowly spin and draw circles on the white in shadow. Her eyes were dry, but stiff with the salt of recent tears.

Seven days isn’t a lot of time.

She’d spent a childhood in pageants, like she was told to. She’d been the valedictorian of her high school graduating class, like she was supposed to. Then she went to school and got her undergrad in robotics engineering, like she was expected to. There’d never been time for dating, much of a social circle who knew her without her last name, she’d never even been drunk before. It had taken her until her 36th birthday to shuck the yolk of responsibility that’d been foisted on her by her parents and finally pursue a the dream she’d drawn about when she was little, to take charge of her own, adult life.

And now, two months later, here she was going to die.

She wanted to see Paris as more than a postcard. She wanted to go sky diving, with her cheeks blown aside in that funny way they did in videos. But, most immediately, she wanted to get utterly annihilated at a bar somewhere.

A soft ‘meow’ sounded from the foot of her bed along with the jingle of a tiny bell. The meow sprang on to the bed, walked along her leg like a balance beam, and stared at her, inches from her nose.

“Heya, Jethro,” Stacy said, sniffling.

The black, green-eyed cat, sporting a tall, pink-tipped mohawk fade and a curly-q’d mustache of whiskers sat purring on her chest otherwise silently for several moments. Then, a back leg shot out over Stacy’s forehead and the gruff scratches of feline grooming rhythmically commenced.

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Stacy sighed. “Waste all those years just taking orders and instructions, to then spend more years sitting in design meetings and looking at someone else’s concept work-up’s – I wouldn’t be surprised if they caused the tumor, y’know – and what do I have to show for it?

Meow.

“Well yeah, you, but you’re hardly a legacy, sorry to say. Don’t worry, Tommy’ll take care of you once it’s all said and done. Just, don’t let him let your fade grow out, okay? It looks good on you.”

Mao.

“Good.” She went back to watching the fan and lingered on that word, “legacy,” for a minute longer. Something that lives after you’re gone. Then, in that moment, either the tumor kicked like a baby in utero, or she had an epiphany.

“Up, Jethro, we gotta go. I have an idea.”

Meow?

“Yeah, we have to hit Radio Shack.”

END

The Take: So, relied a little on the reader knowing the context there, but this one was supposed to be cute and laid back. And even if one wanted to moan, “Ugh, Evan, but she didn’t even wind up building the robots IN the story, you doof,” I would rightly respond, “Yeah, well that pretty quickly took a back seat once there was a cat with a mohawk, didn’t it?” (Hahaha, also just realized we could have called it a “meow-hawk,” but that might have seemed too easy, in retrospect.)
Anyway, hope that landed some chuckles. See you guys Tuesday, and may Jethro be with you.

Ciao.